Almost 1 Million Jobs Could Be Lost Thanks To Trumpcare

The GOP's health care bill will make cuts to government-backed insurance and care, potentially driving up unemployment in the health care industry.

The health care industry saw a boom in government-backed efforts to ensure all Americans had health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, prompting the field to experience a high demand for specialized labor. But if the GOP's American Health Care Act passes in the Senate as is, the industry's days of prosperity may be over.

A study backed by the Commonwealth Fund argues that the GOP-led initiative to reform health care laws would trigger a decline in health jobs in 2018. By 2026, the study suggests, at least 725,000 medical care industry jobs would be gone.

This is mainly due to the fact that federal spending under the new rules would drop considerably, causing the demand for higher health industry employment to drop.

While the study also suggests that “the tax repeal policies on their own would be associated with higher employment and state economic growth" — adding 837,000 more jobs in 2018 and leading to an additional 1 million jobs by 2026 — the health industry would lose nearly the same amount of positions.

This bill, thus, could put thousands of health workers in danger of losing gainful employment. With more people in the field unemployed, the study suggests, the effects would be felt across other sectors as unemployed or underemployed individuals won't consume as much.

As members of the GOP in the Senate continue to draft their version of Trumpcare behind closed doors, Senate Democrats are now taking action by slowing down their work, all in an effort to bring attention to the GOP's secret negotiations.

“If Republicans won't relent and debate their health care bill in the open for the American people to see, then they shouldn't expect business as usual in the Senate,” he added.

With this report regarding the House GOP health care bill now in the open, Democrats may want to use these recent findings to check whether the Senate's revisions to the health care bill would have the same effect down the road as it could pit the public against their effort to repeal the ACA.